Transportation energy: Hydrogen vs BEV vs (other)

Range is 300 miles only for the 100 kWh Tesla Model S, which is unaffordable for the average buyer. For the affordable Model 3 or Chevy Volt, range is closer to 200 miles; the big batteries are still expensive. FCEVs could easily be boosted to 400 or 500 mile ranges, unlike BEVs at current prices. Supercharging accelerates battery aging.

As others already pointed out, the comparison point is the nearly $60K Mirai, so a large battery Model 3 is definitely within the ballpark for reasonable comparison. None of the bigger tank FCEVs actually exist, while the Mirai, Model S, and Model 3 do (though the 3 is Mirai-level production numbers at the moment). Further, the Bolt (the Volt is a PHEV, not a BEV), with its lower mileage than the Mirai, actually exists, unlike a similarly priced FCEV, and the similarly-priced and -ranged Model 3 eventually will as well, along with other BEVs from other manufacturers. Does Toyota (or someone else) actually have a close release date for a cheaper FCEV that can compete?

If FCEV sales continue to grow, the number of stations will grow. The station technology is still being developed.

Sure, but EV charging is already developed and already far more widespread, even if you limit it to Superchargers and don't include the even larger numbers of agnostic EV charging stations that you can use with a Bolt or a Leaf in addition to a Model 3.

Hydrogen at 50% in natural gas lines could be extracted, lowering hydrogen content to levels compatible with existing equipment, with careful examination of that equipment.

So you're positing high admixtures of hydrogen in the transport network, and extracting it before it hits the distribution network? You do realize that this doesn't help either filling stations or filling at home, since both of those uses are connected to the distribution network and not the transport network? Further, it still requires replacing things like pumps in the transport network, and, as you admit, plenty of research and testing of said transport network. Finally, where does this hydrogen come from?

I don't recall having doubted that battery production could increase in volume. How much scaling will reduce unit cost is unclear, as are future capacity factors and recharging rates. They may increase considerably.

Fair enough, I'm probably getting general production skepticism mixed up with your skepticism of production suitable for grid storage. That said, so far at least, battery production scaling has been better than predicted, and hydrogen availability has been worse than projected, so unless both trends reverse batteries probably won't become worse than hydrogen in terms of supply. Given that hydrogen is either not carbon neutral (i.e. from natural gas), requires electricity too cheap to meter (which worked out so well for nuclear in the 50s), or requires a production method that plain doesn't exist today, I don't see a good reason to expect that complete reversal.

For comparisons, it is best to compare currently available products and prices, in my humble opinion, in the absence of clear indications.

If we're limiting ourselves to currently available products, then why be bullish on FCEVs at all? There's the extremely low volume Mirai, with a few filling stations in CA only (so the range still doesn't extend beyond NV and OR, regardless of how fast you can fill up), versus hundreds of thousands of BEVs from multiple manufacturers, with charging infrastructure far more widely distributed and also from multiple vendors.

Interestingly, the Mirai had another one of those miraculous high sales months at the end of september/start of october this year. From what I understand, the 250ish sales last year in August was the big delivery to Cal state buildings, who in the California Fuel Cell Partnership agreed to promote the technology by using them for their employees. Also, there's been a bit of a continued increase since Aug 2016 due to the severely lowered lease price ($499->$349/mo) and 'lifetime' hydrogen supply perks (which honestly make the car very hard to resist if you live near a fueling station). So that's that figured out. But why the big spike now?

There has not been a corresponding spike in sales for the Clarity FCEV. This isn't some 'hydrogen revolution kicking in high gear'. I'm a bit puzzled.

On the plus side, you can build perfectly useful batteries without cobalt. But, they all suck compared to cobalt based batteries in terms of energy and power density. It's workable, but less useful for a pure BEV. The Volt uses a LiMn chemistry I'm quite familiar with, and a lot of the Chinese options use LiFePO4, but both of those are 30-50% worse in terms of energy density than a NCA/MNC cell.

I think this has come up before, but there's a lot of advancements going on in this realm as of late. One of the major reasons we haven't seen any capacity increases in 18650 for 2 years (it's been 3500mAh MAX since late 2015!) is because manufacturers have been reducing cobalt and increasing manganese content. There have been tech improvements, and if cobalt would be plentiful this would have already given us ~3800mAh 18650s, but all the advances are counteracted by the need to replace cobalt. I believe we're down to 8-1 Mn:Co cells already.

In the short term, we're actually pretty stuck when it comes to battery manufacturing capacity because of this. As you say, plenty of alternatives, but none of them offer similar energy/power/cost. The fastest-growing technologies (most notably of late: flow batteries) are still about a factor of 2 in cost, any other competing tech has at least 2 orders of magnitude less production capacity and no big additions in the short term. Want a lithium chemistry battery in the next 2 years? Better be content with cobalt!

This is absolutely not a long-term concern though. Technically, cobalt is not a rare element nor one that particularly drives battery cost. None of the elements used in lithium ion batteries of any type are rare. It's just a matter of scaling up mining, refining and recycling.

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I thought they typically used platinum and other rare elements as catalysts, but I'm not particularly up to date on them.

Platinum group metals, specifically Pt and Pd, are still an integral part of fuel cells and will, at the current tech, severely impede any scaling of FCEV technology. There's about an ounce of Pt in a Mirai (=$2k). You need about an ounce more in electrolyzers/reformers/etc. to feed it hydrogen, which you effectively pay through fuel costs. Total industrial non-ICE, non-ChemInd platinum production capacity is something like 20 tonnes per year. That's enough to make 300k FCEVs per year. Last time such a spike was anticipated, platinum prices doubled. That would mean that all in all, total precious metal costs associated with FCEVs could be in the $10k per vehicle neighborhood. Complete madness. Oh, and that platinum is not just something you dump in and be done with - it has to be processed into nanoparticles and embedded in the Nafion. That's not a cheap process. Recycling is also an issue.

Now, all is not lost. Well... all is lost, but I can pretend, right? Be strong, mux, don't listen to the haters!

There is quite obviously no way to make this work with current tech. Look at announcements by Toyota and the Japanese government talking about hydrogen and see the corresponding platinum markets soar. This is a recipe for true materials-bound growth. If hydrogen is ever to be come more than a fun chemistry experiment, we have to ditch the platinum. No other way around it. And researchers are hard at work to solve this! Really, I promise!

... well, they've been saying this since I was in the hydrogen racing business, and that was literally 10 years ago. We have known for a long time that certain patterned nickel electrodes have very similar catalytic activity to platinum, but for reasons beyond my comprehension these articles are always in obscure non-IEEE journals that I can't read. And then the research either gets buried (=never followed up) or commercial attempts just... die. Like clockwork, every year there's another piece of good news, a glimmer of hope at the horizon, they have finally found a new catalyst, it only has 100mV overpotential at 1A/cm2, it's totally a thing now! We solved it, we can stop using platinum! Oh, it erodes away after 10 hours of use. Oh, it is unusable on the oxygen side. Oh, it's still a platinum group metal, just a much rarer one.

If FCEV sales continue to grow, the number of stations will grow. The station technology is still being developed.

I'm not piling on you, I swear I love you as a person, but this is just... no. Please don't say these things. This is like my cousin Jerry who is 34 years old and whose mother keeps saying 'he's still learning how to walk' every time he comes home drunk. The station technology is not 'still being developed'. It was never developed. Or always. I don't know. I have newspaper clippings with literally ITM-style wind-powered hydrogen filling stations from the early fucking 90s, right here in the Netherlands, developed by the energy research center ECN in Petten. Was supposed to become a big thing. Exactly identical technology. Nothing has changed in 30 years. Saying there is anything in particular, outside of connector standardization, to develop while we've had rockets flying on the same shit in the 60s and cars running on it in the 90s is making excuses for an industry unwilling to learn from its mistakes of the past.

I don't have a cousin Jerry.

If anybody is interested in the particulars and if you speak/can read Dutch, 'De vliegende geest' is a book I'd recommend from that time period - also 'Waterstof - op weg naar de praktijk' is a nice little snippet of history from ECN on the state of hydrogen when I was still advocating this technology actively.

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Hydrogen at 50% in natural gas lines could be extracted, lowering hydrogen content to levels compatible with existing equipment, with careful examination of that equipment.

I think this has been discussed earlier in this thread as well, so I don't want to repeat too much - but I am increasingly unconvinced of the viability of this meme. There have been very conflicting studies. The report kickstarting this discussion, at least in my sphere of forums and blogs, was thisun:

This was seen by hydrogen people as validation that you can just uncritically add hydrogen to pipelines and that's that. Of course not quite that un-nuanced, but they did mostly just copy the conclusions from this undated whitepaper from industry and/or other similar papers stating that in some cases you can admix up to 10% hydrogen. Well, can you? People like me got to digging.

And then you find out that end user appliances already go bust 10% earlier with just 3% admixture, so hydrogen concentrations will have to start off really low to increase over time as stuff gets replaced with hydrogen-tolerant versions. That's not good. Oh, and even if you inject high percentages, but then siphon off most of the hydrogen for use in FCEVs/etc., you run into purity/poisoning issues and still can only recover about 90% of the hydrogen.

But most importantly, as you might find when you follow my links - most studies are spotty and don't really show nice graphs of damage versus concentration, net damage in dollar amounts when injecting gas, even attainable separation rates at high volume or attainable energy flow at 70 bar in natgas mains. There are a lot of qualitative conclusions and indirect evidence. This field is still very understudied, and any serious attempt at doing power to gas and gas mains injection will be preceded by years of testing on ever-greater scales, at high cost to the ratepayer or taxpayer. Tests right now are at almost microscopic scales. Like, injecting <0.1% H2 into a couple feet of pipeline. I believe a similar thing is being done in Spain by E.ON.

I used to think this was something that was all figured out. Even googling for papers I can find quotations going back to the early and late 90s, stuff like this. We must know everything there is to know about hydrogen injection, right? This is a done deal? Well, apparently not. I agree, from a technical perspective gas mains could provide an incredibly large, relatively cheap way to store hydrogen. But like FCEVs, there is a big gap between the theoretical benefits and the eventual execution.

I don't recall having doubted that battery production could increase in volume.

You actually spent almost a week this summer arguing furiously with people who suggested that battery production could produce relatively small quantities of batteries (e.g. the amount required for a few tens of thousands of cars):

I don't recall having doubted that battery production could increase in volume.

You actually spent almost a week this summer arguing furiously with people who suggested that battery production could produce relatively small quantities of batteries (e.g. the amount required for a few tens of thousands of cars):

I don't recall having doubted that battery production could increase in volume.

You actually spent almost a week this summer arguing furiously with people who suggested that battery production could produce relatively small quantities of batteries (e.g. the amount required for a few tens of thousands of cars):

I don't recall having doubted that battery production could increase in volume.

You actually spent almost a week this summer arguing furiously with people who suggested that battery production could produce relatively small quantities of batteries (e.g. the amount required for a few tens of thousands of cars):

The fastest-growing technologies (most notably of late: flow batteries) are still about a factor of 2 in cost, any other competing tech has at least 2 orders of magnitude less production capacity and no big additions in the short term.

Flow batteries are a perfectly useful technology for stationary storage, though last I saw aren't really cost competitive there against lithium. I don't see the energy density as being there for vehicle use, and there's almost no chance of standardization that would allow for rapid refueling. It's like hydrogen, but worse. So I don't see them as having any future in transportation. You're literally way better off filling the tanks with 18650s.

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None of the elements used in lithium ion batteries of any type are rare. It's just a matter of scaling up mining, refining and recycling.

They're not rare, but the cobalt is a bit of a problem in that 50% of the supply comes from DRC. It's pretty much "blood cobalt," and they do dominate the production of it right now. Other supplies will eventually come online, certainly, but they're taking quite a while to do so.

The main issue, as you note, is the mining of everything. That needs to ramp up, along with the processing and refining. I don't understand enough about the low level chemistry to know why cobalt seems so useful, but it certainly does.

I keep hearing about lithium battery recycling, but have yet to find much of a description of actual working production lines for it. "Recycling" mostly seems to be shipping containers of batteries to China where people weld new ends on and release the new ULTRAFIRE 9000 to vapers.

I've pointed it out thrice before, but to be fair to shread, the Mirai's "price" is completely irrelevant to the discussion, as a 100% handbuilt, low-volume car / pilot project / compliance vehicle.

More significantly, I wasn't aware that there was $2K of Platinum in the car... That may well be a problem going forward, if no cheaper methods to make the cells are found (and I'm not sure there are enough commercial applications as incentives).

This is one of those linkdump things again. You link to NATURALHY, a German project. You also really seem to like the qualitative conclusions in that brief. Hell, I thought they were pretty convincing the first time I heard of its predecessor project, H2EUROPE.

But let's get into the deep end, shall we? I love the phrasing of these points.

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With regard to pipeline durability, results show that effects on pipe materials used in the natural gas grids, caused by hydrogen, can be mitigated by appropriate measures. Modifications to maintain a safe and reliable supply of customers with natural gas / hydrogen mixtures will mainly be necessary for the transportation pipelines made of steel, but importantly, no "show-stoppers" have been identified.

Oh, of course, it is *technically* possible. No show-stoppers. NATURALHY just found that you need investment of over €1M/km. And you need to completely replace the last mile. And you need to aggressively replace natural gas home appliances. But all that is technically possible! How great! Because let's just quote this little puppy:

They only had a net addition of 9 stations this year, due to failure of some station-development efforts. Their projections from last year have been set back about a year.

Excellent. This totally means everything is going great!

What were you trying to say again? I know I made a big post with lots of words, as I usually do, but you don't have to respond to all of it in one go. Quote something you specifically don't agree with, give me counterevidence, tell me why that particular counterevidence is relevant and I will either concede or contest your point. Then in the end, everybody wins.

I keep hearing about lithium battery recycling, but have yet to find much of a description of actual working production lines for it. "Recycling" mostly seems to be shipping containers of batteries to China where people weld new ends on and release the new ULTRAFIRE 9000 to vapers.

I know you're not totally serious, but this is a very potent recycling method at the moment. Recycled batteries fulfill useful commercial niches, e.g. they're being used for very low-cost battery packs in Indian (and to a lesser extent Chinese) LEVs. There is so much demand and so little supply at the moment that even a 50% SoH battery is a scarce commodity in some sense.

As batteries start to age more and actual materials recycling becomes a thing, then we'll see how valuable lithium ion batteries are as an ore. That doesn't really happen yet, though.

What were you trying to say again? I know I made a big post with lots of words, as I usually do, but you don't have to respond to all of it in one go. Quote something you specifically don't agree with, give me counterevidence, tell me why that particular counterevidence is relevant and I will either concede or contest your point. Then in the end, everybody wins.

Official moderation notice.

Your point is relevant and the correct one, but "big post with lots of words" is bordering on snark, and, as we've seen in the history of this thread, it leads to umbrage and derailment. Carry on.

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one of those linkdump things again

Yeah. shread, don't do that. It's tantamount to "the defense rests" or something.

I've pointed it out thrice before, but to be fair to shread, the Mirai's "price" is completely irrelevant to the discussion, as a 100% handbuilt, low-volume car / pilot project / compliance vehicle.

More significantly, I wasn't aware that there was $2K of Platinum in the car... That may well be a problem going forward, if no cheaper methods to make the cells are found (and I'm not sure there are enough commercial applications as incentives).

In the comparison with BEVs, shread started making comparisons based on price. Again.

Thus, the Mirai's price (with $2k in platinum and who knows what other non-reducible supplier costs) becomes relevant. Again.

In response to demultiplexer, I quoted three posts of mine loaded with links in order to move the discussion from the last decade to the present one.

demultiplexer's riposte claims that the NATURALHY project says you need to invest over one million Euros per km of pipeline to begin injecting hydrogen into the natural gas grid, but he doesn't document that claim. I did not see any statement to that effect in the NATURALHY report. He also repeats the NATURALHY report's statement that some appliances cannot tolerate any hydrogen in their natural gas supply, as if that cost would be prohibitive, but he doesn't quote any cost.

He then agrees that hydrogen is being injected into the natural gas grid in Germany but that it's for direct consumption rather than storage. Well, H2 is being injected into a grid system, in contravention to demultiplexer's insinuation that this is not possible because of embrittlement and a need to spend one million Euros per km of pipeline. The Danish report explains in depth how the natural gas system can buffer uneven electricity supplies by storing gas in caverns. If H2 is mixed in, it is stored along with the natural gas. That no projects are imminent in Denmark is irrelevant; the Danes are folding hydrogen into their gas plans, as is evident in Figure 1 of the report. The first sentence of the French report (engie.com) states: "Energy from renewable sources offers many benefits. Nevertheless, its intermittent availability complicates the process of balancing supply with demand. Power-to-Gas offers a real solution for power supply system backup going forward." The Engie report is not just about a bus refueling station, in fact, bus refueling is not even mentioned on that page, in direct contravention of demultiplexer's claim (with link fixed) that "The French Engie system is a natgas bus refueling station, not storage in natgas pipelines."

demultiplexer then wants to spin that because CA only added 9 H2 stations last year therefore H2 station buildout is going poorly. No, they just wrote down some older stations that failed to launch.

Just like his famously false claim that steel tanks can't hold hydrogen, demultiplexer is reprising shoddy scholarship drowned in verbiage and rhetoric that spectacularly fails to establish the points he is trying to make.

I honestly don't see how $2k in platinum is some sort of meaningful hurdle when the average car price is circa $35k. The other problems with building out a support network for hydrogen fuel cells vehicles are much more significant. Hypothetically if I could replace the platinum with something dirt cheap it wouldn't drastically change the hydrogen fuel cell proposition.

$2k is what car buyers routinely pay for some extra speakers and a DVD player.

I honestly don't see how $2k in platinum is some sort of meaningful hurdle when the average car price is circa $35k. The other problems with building out a support network for hydrogen fuel cells vehicles are much more significant. Hypothetically if I could replace the platinum with something dirt cheap it wouldn't drastically change the hydrogen fuel cell proposition.

$2k is what car buyers routinely pay for some extra speakers and a DVD player.

$2k is the raw materials cost, not the final in-the-car cost. The raw materials for your $2k speakers and DVD player are probably significantly less than $100.

There is significant markup at each stage of manufacture (Processing the raw material*, producing components, assembling components, installing components in the car.)

*ie, converting a bar/sheet of platinum to the appropriate nano particle size.

demultiplexer's quote of $2k for the platinum in the Mirai is high by a factor of 2 or more. There is about an ounce of platinum in a Mirai 's FC stack and platinum is priced at $929 per ounce as of 11/15/17. GM likewise has a fuel cell stack that contains about an ounce of platinum; GM's engineers expect the platinum content of their next FC to be under 10 grams (approximately one third of an ounce). That will lower the precious metal content of fuel cells to within an order of magnitude of that of catalytic converters for small ICEs.

He then agrees that hydrogen is being injected into the natural gas grid in Germany but that it's for direct consumption rather than storage. Well, H2 is being injected into a grid system, in contravention to demultiplexer's insinuation that this is not possible because of embrittlement and a need to spend one million Euros per km of pipeline.

Please note that you're not really contradicting what demux said. Note that in this post of mine, I did a bit more research on the plant you tout, and calculated that, based on the most optimistic assumptions, it'd be injecting an absolutely miniscule amount of hydrogen compared to Germany's actual consumption. We obviously don't know the actual concentrations at injection point, but we can guess that it's probably pretty low since it's located in Brunsbüttel in Schleswig-Holstein, and should be near both ChemCoast Park Brunsbüttel and the Vattenfall nat gas power station there. Of course, given the proximity to ChemCoast Park Brunsbüttel, I'm not sure why they wouldn't just use the hydrogen directly as feedstock for chemical processes instead of mixing it into the nat gas feed.

Following up further, it looks like my estimate for output was very close, only 4% low based on this article. Note that the article was written in August this year, and that the equipment was to be delivered last month, so I doubt said plant is actually up and running yet.

Can you please link us to reliable documentation that shows that hydrogen injection into natural gas pipelines is actually already operating at beyond lab/test scale somewhere?

^^^^ Cogwheel, You're literally moving the goalposts here. H2 is being injected. It's irrelevant that no data are available on the amount of H2 in that pipeline (note, not the entire German pipeline system, just that line.) Then you say there could be more being injected because some of it is _possibly_ being consumed by other uses? Maybe some is being used to fill FCEVs too, or not. Like the Model 3, we'll have to wait and see whether PtG continues to progress. But we don't have to wait to see it starting; it's started.

Shread, this has been said many times to you: debate using normal debating tactics. Argue the point, use (counter)arguments that are demonstrably relevant to the point and refrain from gish galloping, interpreting other people's points in the most negative way possible, taking things personally, etc. I'm with you, man, hydrogen is awesome. It's just also really shit and you seem to have no interest in acknowledging that, let alone finding ways to move forward and fix the many issues hydrogen has. The first step in the healing process is acknowledging that you're sick.

In the interests of not beating everything to a pulp, I'll just pick out the juiciest parts and respond to those. Notice that I'm posting in a 'thinking out loud' type of writing style, so you understand my state of mind as you're reading this - being able to respond in kind would be nice. I'm much more interested in your and other people's thought processes than whatever links and articles are hip today.

demultiplexer's riposte claims that the NATURALHY project says you need to invest over one million Euros per km of pipeline to begin injecting hydrogen into the natural gas grid, but he doesn't document that claim. I did not see any statement to that effect in the NATURALHY report. He also repeats the NATURALHY report's statement that some appliances cannot tolerate any hydrogen in their natural gas supply, as if that cost would be prohibitive, but he doesn't quote any cost.

I love this. You actually went to the link and checked, and found out that I was taunting you. I'm sorry that I have to resort to these tactics, but it really seemed from your earlier posts that you just tried to find whatever headline agrees with your point and dumped that. Reminds me of /u/chopchopped on reddit.

I'm not pulling the million dollars out of my ass, by the way. This is why I recommended looking more into the hydrogen.energy.gov presentations and in particular Adams et al. (e.g. this one) (white) papers. Natural gas pipelines cost a couple million per mile, and retrofitting them to hydrogen transport has the DoE TARGET of $1M/mi. Note that it's a target - not something that has actually been attained yet. This is what the DoE expects hydrogen transport to cost in a future, commercially viable scenario. This is what hydrogen.energy.gov does; they set out cost and production targets that they expect, using market modeling, to be necessary steps towards a hydrogen economy.

As for appliances: NATURALHY does not state any specific costs, but you can guess! Let's take Germany's installed natural gas appliance base to be in the order of the number of houses - roughly 40M. Regular stove burners apparently work fine on hydrogen, but natgas central heating and similar appliances don't. So let's say those have to be replaced at an average €1000 (which is very, very low, especially when discounting the investment). That's €40B in investments across the economy, or equivalent to replacing the entire high-pressure and medium-pressure natural gas pipeline system in Germany (approx. 20 000 km) plus a decent chunk of natgas distribution. This is not a trivial investment. Even a lifetime reduction during the transition period will manifest itself as a very significant chunk of change. I feel like ignoring or underappreciating these kinds of points, which are very clearly stated in blatantly pro-hydrogen research pieces informing legislation, will only serve to damage the reputation of a switch to hydrogen. Imagine the headlines: '40 billion euro boondoggle'. I live in the Netherlands. The word 'Betuwelijn' (a massive, initially very unsuccessful infrastructure project) is recognizable to each and every Dutch person and means ridiculous government spending. That was just a couple billion.

I think I have been ultra-clear on this point, but you choose to ignore salient points in favor of the absolute most positive scenario for hydrogen. Yes, at this point in time, platinum sits at $1k/oz. But platinum is, by and large, an investment commodity, not a chemically useful market commodity. Price of platinum is almost completely determined by expectation of future demand. Fact is that for the long time being, fuel cells will require significant amounts of platinum and any inkling on the horizon that fuel cells will become more popular will send the price of platinum skyrocketing. The spike up to $2.2k in 2008 wasn't due to some shortage or new application - it was a direct result of speculative marketing on platinum because of many car manufacturers switching to better autocatalytic filters for Diesels, as well as commitments to hydrogen. A tiny demand increase - someting like 5% - combined with a slump in supply caused an almost x3 price increase. Imagine what happens when hydrogen becomes a big thing, at our current level of platinum requirements in fuel cells and electrolyzers. Again, you can't discount these kinds of factors. There is no such thing as hedging for platinum prices.

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GM likewise has a fuel cell stack that contains about an ounce of platinum; GM's engineers expect the platinum content of their next FC to be under 10 grams (approximately one third of an ounce). That will lower the precious metal content of fuel cells to within an order of magnitude of that of catalytic converters for small ICEs.

I've tried and retried writing a response to this particular point, but it's so complicated. There are two big innovations in platinum-based catalysts: lower loading due to less erosion and lower loading due to better patterning. Both have significant disadvantages as well. Back in the day, we just used flat(ish) electrode patterns, with just one side (or actually, just about 2 Sr) of each platinum atom being exposed to the electrolyte and even some bulk platinum just not participating in reactions at all. Over the years, 3D polyhedron-like structures with nickel backbones and single atom-thick platinum coatings have been produced to reduce total platinum needed and increase the participation of each platinum atom. We are pretty much at the end of that development curve with 1oz/100kW type loadings.

However, 100kW is the nominal power output, not the continuous rating. At high flow rates, catalytic action becomes less efficient and platinum catalyst tends to erode out faster, so the continuous rating of a typical fuel cell is between 1/3rd and 1/2 of its rated power. By changing stuff around, e.g. creating better backbone structures for the catalyst, erosion can be reduced. By improving flow conditions around the electrodes, turbulence issues can be solved. This reduces fuel cell size and platinum loading because, essentially, a smaller fuel cell can be used for the same continuous output power. But, and this is critical, you do still lose out on peak power. And that has to be delivered by, you guessed it, a battery.

GM is not talking about a future with 100kW fuel cell stacks and nothing else in your car. They're talking about fuel cell range extender type situations, where the battery is your main power source and the fuel cell just recharges the battery. This is where you get your gains now. But at what cost? Well, the cost of a battery. You're replacing scarce commodities by, by comparison, about as much dollar value in batteries.

Now, there is more to this still. Platinum is so rare, that even an eroded fuel cell can be regarded as a very valuable platinum ore, and it is useful to reclaim the platinum. The more we micropattern the platinum, the more we do to it, the harder it gets to actually reclaim it. This is part of why I've been hammering on the electrolyzer issue as well. Each fuel cell vehicle on the road requires a certain capacity of electrolyzer with a corresponding platinum loading. These platinum electrodes are not going to be these micropatterned PEM types; they'll be platinum black coated straight electrodes, because those are infinitely easier to reclaim, at much higher recycling rates. This drives demand for platinum just as much as the car production does.

And lastly, even if platinum loading is reduced by two-thirds - in a reasonable future considering how markets and technology currently works, that's still hundreds and hundreds of dollars just in raw materials value alone. Process it and you turn it into easily a couple thousand. A Mitsubishi Mirage, base version, costs about $3k in materials and energy to produce, everything included, and retails for $10k(ish). The very cheapest you can ever make a hydrogen fuel cell car, thus, is $20-25k, and I'm being generous here. Plus fuel is inherently at least ~twice as expensive. What possible market position do you expect for a car that can address at most about 30% of the car market with no other USP other than 'it charges faster than an electric car, sometimes'.

I hope you can appreciate how one way or another, a fuel cell will always be an inherently expensive drivetrain solution, at least barring any massive technology leaps. Reduce loading, increase cost elsewhere. Even the cheapest future car would still be well above the median price of a new car worldwide. Second hand market will be nonexistent, as the raw value of the car would exceed $10k. Work out these scenarios in your head, or write them down, and find that the platinum problem is a much, much bigger problem than you think.

^^^^More excessive amounts of bullshit from demultiplexer with only one link plus some meta-debating garbage at the start.

First, NATURALHY was an EU project funding academic engineers. Their MAIN finding was that H2 could be transported in natural gas pipelines at concentrations of up to 50%. demultiplexer says that's wrong because of a DOE report (his one link) that predates the NATURALYHY project. It should be quite clear to anybody with even a smidgen of academic training that the project participants would have taken the DOE report into consideration before arriving at their MAIN conclusion that H2 could be transported in nat gas pipelines.

The NATURALHY project also mentions that some appliances will not be able to tolerate any H2 in their gas supply, but that most will, and that, in general, over a gradient between 0 and 20%, there will be gradual dropout of some appliances as H2 concentration increases but most will be compatible. I didn't see where they quantified their statement; I guess one would have to dive into the academic literature. demultiplexer runs off and says that all gas appliances other than stoves will have to be replaced with pure H2 and pulls more numbers out of his ass about cost. Wrong again. At 50% H2, BTW, nozzles on gas stove burners would need to be replaced.

Then, having had his claim debunked in my previous post that the platinum in a fuel cell stack costs $2000, demultiplexer first says, well, platinum spiked above $2k per ounce in 2008 because of speculation. Here are data going back to 1986: https://www.apmex.com/spotprices/platinum-price. Platinum prices were stable between 1986 and 2002 at about $500 per oz, then saw a rise between 2002 and 2015, spiking above $2k per oz with the 2008 financial disruption. They have now stabilized around $1000 per oz since the middle of 2015. Looks like the speculative bubble has subsided. demultiplexer finally admits near the end of his post that raw materials in FC cars will be "hundreds and hundreds of dollars." oops

demultiplexer's next batch of bullshit concerns GM's fuel cell stack prototypes and their prediction that their next iteration will use less than 10 ozg of platinum per unit. He says, no, "We are pretty much at the end of that development curve with 1oz/100kW type loadings." GM's current prototype uses 0.95 oz of platinum for 92 kW. Who is he to say their next one will not use less than 10 ozg? Of course, down below, he admits "And lastly, even if platinum loading is reduced by two-thirds." Will usage really have plateaued at 10 ozg per 100 kW?

Then there is some handwaving about how these reduced-platinum designs will not be deployed because the platinum will be too difficult to recycle. Really?

Then demultiplexer complains that fuel cell output will be buffered by a battery. Yes, that's how it's being done now in the Mirai. I suppose his point is that this will add to cost. In mass production, I expect inexpensive FCEVs to be priced the same as a Prius, plus perhaps a $5000 bump for the stack, so less than $25,000 MSRP. Not the cheapest of cars, but not bad. So, yes, FCEVs will be more expensive than the most inexpensive ICE vehicles. The Mitsubishi Mirage's MSRP is $13,830, BTW, not $10,000.

The NATURALHY project also mentions that some appliances will not be able to tolerate any H2 in their gas supply, but that most will, and that, in general, over a gradient between 0 and 20%, there will be gradual dropout of some appliances as H2 concentration increases but most will be compatible.

If there are any home appliances that don't work on a particular mix, even if misadjusted, you can't dump hydrogen into the final distribution line going to those homes. "95% of appliances work on this, and 5% are now a serious explosion hazard..." is not an acceptable solution. Further, how do you determine which that 5% is? They're likely to be old enough that you can't easily get replacement parts anymore, especially for a different gas mix than they were designed for.

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Then demultiplexer complains that fuel cell output will be buffered by a battery. Yes, that's how it's being done now in the Mirai. I suppose his point is that this will add to cost. In mass production, I expect FCEVs to be priced the same as a Prius, plus perhaps a $5000 bump for the stack, so less than $25,000 MSRP. Not the cheapest of cars, but not bad.

The Prius battery is tiny compared to what you'd need to buffer a fuel cell.

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demultiplexer's next batch of bullshit concerns GM's fuel cell stack prototypes and their prediction that their next iteration will use less than 10 oz of platinum per unit. He says, no, "We are pretty much at the end of that development curve with 1oz/100kW type loadings." GM's current prototype uses 0.95 oz of platinum for 92 kW. Who is he to say their next one will not use less than 10 oz? Of course, down below, he admits "And lastly, even if platinum loading is reduced by two-thirds." Will usage really have plateaued at 10 oz per 100 kW?

The NATURALHY project also mentions that some appliances will not be able to tolerate any H2 in their gas supply, but that most will, and that, in general, over a gradient between 0 and 20%, there will be gradual dropout of some appliances as H2 concentration increases but most will be compatible.

If there are any home appliances that don't work on a particular mix, even if misadjusted, you can't dump hydrogen into the final distribution line going to those homes. "95% of appliances work on this, and 5% are now a serious explosion hazard..." is not an acceptable solution. Further, how do you determine which that 5% is? They're likely to be old enough that you can't easily get replacement parts anymore, especially for a different gas mix than they were designed for.

Yes, there would have to be an organized program to deal with appliances that couldn't handle H2.

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Then demultiplexer complains that fuel cell output will be buffered by a battery. Yes, that's how it's being done now in the Mirai. I suppose his point is that this will add to cost. In mass production, I expect FCEVs to be priced the same as a Prius, plus perhaps a $5000 bump for the stack, so less than $25,000 MSRP. Not the cheapest of cars, but not bad.

The Prius battery is tiny compared to what you'd need to buffer a fuel cell.

I believe the Mirai uses a Prius battery.

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demultiplexer's next batch of bullshit concerns GM's fuel cell stack prototypes and their prediction that their next iteration will use less than 10 ozg of platinum per unit. He says, no, "We are pretty much at the end of that development curve with 1oz/100kW type loadings." GM's current prototype uses 0.95 oz of platinum for 92 kW. Who is he to say their next one will not use less than 10 ozg? Of course, down below, he admits "And lastly, even if platinum loading is reduced by two-thirds." Will usage really have plateaued at 10 ozg per 100 kW?

You seem to be confusing 1oz/100kW with 10oz/100kW here.

Oops, 10 grams of platinum, not 10 ounces. Fixed above and in the original.

Cobalt is more likely to be a short term supply issue, or an "ethics in battery production" issue, since half the world's supply is "artesian mined" in the Congo, which basically means hand dug wells and child labor.

I continue to think this is overblown as a long term bottleneck, since there's quite large reserves in other places like Australia and Canada and the lack of exploitation there seems like more of a result of low prices than anything else. If supply become an issue, or even really if standards are set for sources, it's hard to see how other countries wouldn't increase production and also hard to see Congo not moving to more industrial methods.

Basically AFAICT this is a historical accident of incredibly rich ore right at the surface, and even deeper mining in the same place would entail a switch to more modern methods. So it seems like there's this assumption you take as axiomatic that that's just where cobalt comes from when all it really needs is enough demand to shift from being mostly a byproduct of copper/nickel mining to being a resource exploited in its own right, and if battery manufacturing continues to ramp up that's exactly what'll happen.

Moreover, my understanding is the advances in lithium metal secondary cells would obviate the need if they become viable for vehicle use.

Overall it's just really hard to see how this is a fundamental issue in the long term.

Do fuel cells need either similar materials that aren't obtainable easily in extreme quantities, or exotic production methods that will be difficult to scale, such that there are similar limits on FCEVs taking over as there are for BEVs, outside of the obvious and oft repeated hydrogen supply?

They need platinum as a catalyst. So do catalytic converters on ICE though and they seem to be doing fine.

Cobalt is more likely to be a short term supply issue, or an "ethics in battery production" issue, since half the world's supply is "artesian mined" in the Congo, which basically means hand dug wells and child labor.

I continue to think this is overblown as a long term bottleneck, since there's quite large reserves in other places like Australia and Canada and the lack of exploitation there seems like more of a result of low prices than anything else. If supply become an issue, or even really if standards are set for sources, it's hard to see how other countries wouldn't increase production and also hard to see Congo not moving to more industrial methods.

Basically AFAICT this is a historical accident of incredibly rich ore right at the surface, and even deeper mining in the same place would entail a switch to more modern methods. So it seems like there's this assumption you take as axiomatic that that's just where cobalt comes from when all it really needs is enough demand to shift from being mostly a byproduct of copper/nickel mining to being a resource exploited in its own right, and if battery manufacturing continues to ramp up that's exactly what'll happen.

Moreover, my understanding is the advances in lithium metal secondary cells would obviate the need if they become viable for vehicle use.

Overall it's just really hard to see how this is a fundamental issue in the long term.

Do fuel cells need either similar materials that aren't obtainable easily in extreme quantities, or exotic production methods that will be difficult to scale, such that there are similar limits on FCEVs taking over as there are for BEVs, outside of the obvious and oft repeated hydrogen supply?

They need platinum as a catalyst. So do catalytic converters on ICE though and they seem to be doing fine.

Platinum is mixed with palladium and rhodium in catalytic converters; collectively, they are referred to as PGM for Platinum Group Metals. All three are rare. Converters contain between 3 and 7 grams of PGMs. Current auto fuel cells contain about 1 ounce, or 28 grams of platinum, so 3 to 9 times as much as a catalytic converter. GM's next auto fuel cell will contain less than 10 g of platinum. So fuel cells use a bit more platinum than catalytic converters but are getting closer. I don't know how the use of pure platinum in fuel cells versus PGM in converters affects this.

^^^^ Cogwheel, You're literally moving the goalposts here. H2 is being injected. It's irrelevant that no data are available on the amount of H2 in that pipeline (note, not the entire German pipeline system, just that line.) Then you say there could be more being injected because some of it is _possibly_ being consumed by other uses? Maybe some is being used to fill FCEVs too, or not. Like the Model 3, we'll have to wait and see whether PtG continues to progress. But we don't have to wait to see it starting; it's started.

I'll make it explicit as to how I'm not goalpost shifting, since you apparently didn't follow my implicit train of thought. You appear to be pointing to the not-yet-operational hydrogen injection plant at Brunsbüttel as evidence that minimal natural gas network upgrades are needed to handle hydrogen injection. I pointed out that said plant isn't yet operational (a fact you should accept based on what I've linked unless you can show information to the contrary), and when it is there's every reason to expect that the amount of hydrogen injected will be low enough that it isn't evidence that those network upgrades aren't required by significant hydrogen injection amounts. You also haven't shown any other hydrogen injection plants having gotten beyond the "yeah, this is theoretically possible" stage, so you must be using Brunsbüttel and not some other plant to support your argument.

Another thing to be aware of: There's also a planned (contract was awarded back in March) lithium ion energy storage installation right next to the hydrogen generation plant. Given this, I think that Germany is using Brunsbüttel as a lab, and wouldn't consider the P2G installation as proof that it's worth doing at larger scale, only that they think P2G is worth looking into and experimenting with to learn more.

You apparently didn't understand my comment about other uses as well. I did not say that some of the hydrogen could be used as feedstock for chemical processes or otherwise, I was asking what the reasoning is behind injecting high value hydrogen into low value natural gas and burning it to either make power or heat, as opposed to using it directly as an input for one of the several chemical plants at ChemCoast Park Brunsbüttel and thereby maintaining its higher economic value. I'm not convinced that the reason for doing it is testing the resilience of the natural gas network in that area to hydrogen injection, since the concentrations, as detailed above, should be very low.

Do fuel cells need either similar materials that aren't obtainable easily in extreme quantities, or exotic production methods that will be difficult to scale, such that there are similar limits on FCEVs taking over as there are for BEVs, outside of the obvious and oft repeated hydrogen supply?

They need platinum as a catalyst. So do catalytic converters on ICE though and they seem to be doing fine.

Looks like catalytic converters typically contain about 3 to 7 grams of platinum group metals, so if GM is successful in getting the platinum in fuel cells down to 10g target, platinum content shouldn't be a problem unless fuel cells have significantly shorter lifespans than catalytic converters. With today's fuel cells, that's four to ten times the platinum usage per vehicle, though. I'd also like to point out that the article shread linked to support the 10g target is a bit more vague as to timeframe, with the low platinum fuel cells being "next generation" as opposed to "their next iteration".

You're grasping at straws to refute the NATURLHY report. I agree that we haven't received word that H2 is being injected into the supply system at Brunsbüttel; but it's close enough from the latest press releases that it's ridiculous to claim that H2 injection is not possible on the basis of Brunsbüttel. As I said less succinctly, let's wait and see.

but it's close enough from the latest press releases that it's ridiculous to claim that H2 injection is not possible on the basis of Brunsbüttel.

The point of providing technical evidence in an argument is to convince people of feasibility. If someone points out a flaw in your evidence (e.g. it may not be what you thought), they aren't claiming is is "not possible", they are pointing out that evidence does not support feasibility. I don't know much about gas pipelines, but from the summaries people provided above, and the presentation you linked, it looks like the expert projections are somewhere in the 0-50% concentration range being feasible, which basically means that people aren't sure. The plant you linked above is apparently not yet injecting, and will anyway inject too little to provide useful data. At this point you should either try to find better data to support feasibility, or else conclude that the feasibility is uncertain.

And when one variety of "usable data" consists of, "Whoops. Wow, that line cracked a lot worse than we thought... sorry about the natural gas explosions, and we're going to have to dig up a few thousand miles of natural gas line to fix that..." - people may be somewhat conservative about it.

If you want natural gas, do the chemistry with hydrogen to get natural gas. It works with everything that's hooked up to natural gas lines, oddly enough.

We have a bit of data on "changing the fuel assumptions" when the government started mandating perfectly good alcohol as an adulterant in what was previously perfectly good gasoline. It didn't go well for an awful long time in terms of fuel systems. Stuff handles it now, but a lot of people were really, really upset over the damage it did to older systems that were perfectly good on gasoline for a long while.

Do that same thing with natural gas lines, and now you have homes blowing up. That's a bit more of a problem than gas leaks in a car.

but it's close enough from the latest press releases that it's ridiculous to claim that H2 injection is not possible on the basis of Brunsbüttel.

The point of providing technical evidence in an argument is to convince people of feasibility. If someone points out a flaw in your evidence (e.g. it may not be what you thought), they aren't claiming is is "not possible", they are pointing out that evidence does not support feasibility. I don't know much about gas pipelines, but from the summaries people provided above, and the presentation you linked, it looks like the expert projections are somewhere in the 0-50% concentration range being feasible, which basically means that people aren't sure. The plant you linked above is apparently not yet injecting, and will anyway inject too little to provide useful data. At this point you should either try to find better data to support feasibility, or else conclude that the feasibility is uncertain.

It's not that people are not sure about how much H2 can be in a pipeline, it's that pipeline capacity varies by line. This applies more to distribution lines than transmission lines. As I recall from reading the NATURALHY lay termination report, most transmission pipelines are suitable for 50% H2, but I have not seen any breakdown by pipeline. Appliances on distribution lines could only handle up to 20% H2 without upgrade. Therefore, prior to appliance upgrade, H2 concentration in excess of 20% in transmission lines would require reduction at the transmission-distribution junction.

A currently operating PtG system that injects into the German does so at 2% or less H2. See citations in the first two paragraphs of the Power to Hydrogen section of the Wikipedia article on Power-to-gas. As well as additional German installations, that section also mentions injection is occurring in Italy.

Injecting hydrogen into natural gas lines as a way of transporting hydrogen is relevant in the context of hydrogen infrastructure. One of the assertions made (I've certainly made it) is that we have an electric infrastructure, we have a natural gas infrastructure, we have a gasoline infrastructure, and we don't have a hydrogen infrastructure to speak of. If you can inject hydrogen into natural gas lines and filter it out somehow, that basically gives you hydrogen infrastructure for free. It's just a question of, "Can this actually be done safely?"

Depends on what you think the topic is, realistically I don't think this thread ever had a purpose other than giving shread a place to tilt his windmill so in that sense it's as on topic as it ever was.

Front page article on using a molten metal catalyst to extract hydrogen from natural gas without releasing the carbon as CO2. Produces pure carbon presumably in the form of graphite as a waste product. I don't know if this can be commercialized but it strikes me as by far a more practical method of hydrogen transportation than trucks, pipeline blends, or on site electrolysis from water. It would use the existing natural gas pipeline infrastructure as is and it would use existing fossil fuel resources without releasing the carbon (provided they clean up the leaks from fracking). The energy for a given amount of natural gas would be less since the carbon is lost but I'm not fundamentally opposed to that as long as methane/CO2 emissions are avoided.

And when one variety of "usable data" consists of, "Whoops. Wow, that line cracked a lot worse than we thought... sorry about the natural gas explosions, and we're going to have to dig up a few thousand miles of natural gas line to fix that..." - people may be somewhat conservative about it.

If you want natural gas, do the chemistry with hydrogen to get natural gas. It works with everything that's hooked up to natural gas lines, oddly enough.

We have a bit of data on "changing the fuel assumptions" when the government started mandating perfectly good alcohol as an adulterant in what was previously perfectly good gasoline. It didn't go well for an awful long time in terms of fuel systems. Stuff handles it now, but a lot of people were really, really upset over the damage it did to older systems that were perfectly good on gasoline for a long while.

Do that same thing with natural gas lines, and now you have homes blowing up. That's a bit more of a problem than gas leaks in a car.

Aww shit, why don't you read the presentation I linked above on this page and look at photos of real explosions rather than engage in fear mongering.

Injecting hydrogen into natural gas lines as a way of transporting hydrogen is relevant in the context of hydrogen infrastructure. One of the assertions made (I've certainly made it) is that we have an electric infrastructure, we have a natural gas infrastructure, we have a gasoline infrastructure, and we don't have a hydrogen infrastructure to speak of. If you can inject hydrogen into natural gas lines and filter it out somehow, that basically gives you hydrogen infrastructure for free. It's just a question of, "Can this actually be done safely?"

Perhaps the most important aspect of H2 is storing the energy in electricity for long periods, inexpensively. The basic rationale of PtG H2 for pipelines is to phase out natural gas entirely but meanwhile to leverage the existing natural gas distribution system. It's underway; we'll see how it pans out.

CoorsTek and the University of Oslo think they have come up with a "near-zero loss" method of reforming methane to hydrogen (near zero means >87% efficient). By their numbers, the process would make a H2 fuel cell car more efficient well to wheel than a BEV powered from a gas turbine power plant.

CoorsTek and the University of Oslo think they have come up with a "near-zero loss" method of reforming methane to hydrogen (near zero means >87% efficient). By their numbers, the process would make a H2 fuel cell car more efficient well to wheel than a BEV powered from a gas turbine power plant.

The ammonia (and hence fertilizer) industry uses steam reforming to produce millions of tons of hydrogen feedstock. If this process really is a major improvement in efficiency over current steam reforming, that's a likely first place it will show up commercially.